A certain minimum amount of sunlight is needed for productive writing. What more can I say? It’s not that nothing was experienced and chronicled in some form during those dark days, but the blogging juices never flowed with sufficient intensity to achieve total follow-through. At the same time, of course, the usual suspects were posting left and right (limericks??? What.The.Fuck?), resulting in feelings of literary inadequacy. Then there was that riveting meltdown around New Years (where’s Part II??) and S.S.’s brilliantly sober State of the Vinyl Union Address which must have generated a great many email responses (please publish them, Scott! you can always change the names to protect the "innocent" ...).
I spent this past Winter doing what I usually do, which is drink too much, sleep too much and avoid going anywhere where I might encounter corporate holiday bullshit. At some point during the annual hibernation, a copy of Chris Watson’s El Tren Fantasma CD (Touch) arrived and it’s probably the record of his that I liked best so far upon initial listening.
In part, my enthusiasm flows from some long ago adventures on some of those same trains. It’s also due to the widely appreciated beats that result from the repetitive design of the rails and ties upon which the train rides. One will often encounter magnificent drones from jet engines or propellers in-flight but such sounds lack the romance, if not the randomness, of those produced by the immortal choochoos.
The Watson CD fit right in with a deep holidaze-dodging dive thru the remaining few Frederick Wiseman films that I had either not watched in their entirety before, or that I’d watched only on crappy video dubs. All of Wiseman’s movies are available on very well-engineered DVD-Rs here (the docs filmed in color are practically an homage to whatever 16mm film stock Kodak was pushing that year), and while they are not exactly “cheap” you can rest assured that they are worth it and, equally important, your money is going straight to the artist, where it belongs, without any skimmers in between. It should be noted that Wiseman’s films, while shot entirely by a single camera, are not shot by Wiseman himself. His cameramen (most especially John Davey) are among the greatest to ever wield the instrument, to be sure, but Wiseman’s primary role, besides “directing” (“let’s shoot this”), is to hold the microphone and record the sound.
Quite frankly, there is little to distinguish the audio portion of the sardine packing sequence from BELFAST, MAINE and certain mid-period Merzbow CDs (turn the volume UP).
On the other side of the spectrum is the classic introduction to Adjustment & Work, whereby we are transported from wherever we are in the “real” world into the Alabama Institute for the Blind and Deaf, circa 1984-85 (the film was released in 1986).
It’s this sort of quintessential Wiseman business that reminds of Watson’s work (and others, too, e.g., Tony Schwartz, Jed Speare, Bill Fontana). For what it’s worth, Wisemans’ three preceding films in this early 80s series (BLIND, DEAF, and MULTI-HANDICAPPED) are equally worthy of viewing by anyone interested in understanding sensual experience and the deprivation of aspects thereof (unless of course you are blind and/or deaf ...). All of them concern this Alabama school. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of Wiseman's filmography. I spent a couple beautiful weekend afternoons in April a decade ago watching NEAR DEATH and I never looked at life, or movies, the same way ...
Back to the Winter wrap up. Many of the darkest days near the Winter solstice are spent on the couch, under a comfy blanket, watching the TV, preferably with a jar of liquor or coffee in hand. One tired morning I consumed two black cups and stumbled upon the beautifully remastered print of 200 MOTELS, showing on Turner Classics. How is it possible that such a movie was produced and actually released by a major corporation in one of the most uptight countries in our incredibly uptight planet? I could listen endlessly to Ringo Starr talk nonchalantly about the guys in the band and their varied strategies for finding “pussy” on the road, or the groupies complaining that the term “penis” sounds so “medicinal”. I’d tried more than once to watch the movie from beginning to end and failed to complete the mission but for whatever reason on this particular wintry morning it all made perfect sense. Yes, it’s stunning that Mark Volman can’t help but mouth the lines of the other performers, or that nobody told him to stop it (but not suprising at all that they didn't bother to re-shoot any of those sequences). Still, the music is incredible. It was inspired to drag the 10LP Mystery Box out of the archives for the first time in a decade or so and spin the first side of the LP entitled “Beyond the Fringe of Audience Comprehension,” essentially an alternate studio take of the core 200 Motels material. Good stuff.
That’s not to say I didn’t get out at all during the black month of eternal night. Early in December I wandered into the weird cement labyrinth called the Berkeley Art Museum and listened to some deep drones sourced from crudely fashioned analog “boopers” courtesy of Negativwobblyland (aka "We Dared Ourselves to Call Ourselves This"; seriously, that's a band name right up there with Metalliloureedica). The best sounds of that night were due in large part to the musicians' appreciation for the deep acoustic possibilities of the space (previously explored by Terry Riley, Ellen Fullman, and others --- would be nice to see a Date Palms gig there ...). I closed my eyes and levitated for seconds at a time.
Preceding NWL was a presentation of some old and new work by Bryan Boyce, whose videos include some of the most hilarious and sublime audiovisual responses to the worst (best?) bullshit that has ever been shoved in humanity's collective face. A couple examples of the former and latter (or is it latter and former?):
We were lucky that night to see tiptop video presentations of found-material/collage masterpieces on par with the similarly inspired works of Anger and Conner, as well as previews of some future classics yet to be subjected to deep, deep contemplation by the pathetic golden-leashed lawyers the would-be copyrightist asshole rulers of our planet. At least one audience member lamented the absence of America’s Biggest Dick from the collection, and we, too, wished it had been shown, for obvious reasons.
Officially, Spring is still more than a month away. But we didn't have much of a winter here in the East Bay (a couple weeks of dry chill but that was it) so f u c k i t I'm calling Spring now. The aloes are blooming.
